Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Tarzan Goes to India (1962)

Tarzan goes to India to help a Rajah save a heard of elephants from an impending dam. The project is being headed in part by an old enemy of Tarzan's who built a damn and used it as cover for hunting elephants for ivory.

The modern Tarzan marches on in a film that benefits from being shot on location. The change in location adds greatly to the proceedings as does the widescreen. I'm guessing the change of location to India was financial, but it was a coup in many ways since it allowed for epic scale sequences such as the vast dam site. It may look a tad clunky, but t the same time it has a weight over what they would have done today with computers at 100 times the cost.

If the film gets a bit twee with the little kid who lives in the jungle with the elephants things are more than made up for by the action sequences which kick in at the opening as Tarzan doesn't land in India so much as leap from a plane into the lake outside the Rajah's  palace, from there there are elephant attacks, cobra attacks, construction accidents and general man on man nastiness. For my money the only real problem is the damn builders are dicks because they can be rather than for any viable reason.

I know this film isn't particularly highly rated at IMDB but I'm not sure why.  Perhaps most people only saw this in a crappy pan and scan TV version because sitting at home and watching this on a big screen TV I was completely enthralled. Is it perfect, not but it is entertaining as all hell. I would gladly watch this again, and I will soon with a big bowl of popcorn.

A must see for anyone who wants to see a grand old school adventure.

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